


let him go

by aaronwarnerisabeautifulstorm



Series: the push and the pull [2]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Emotional Manipulation, Introspection, M/M, Mutual Pining, Self-Indulgent, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-05 16:45:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18832636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aaronwarnerisabeautifulstorm/pseuds/aaronwarnerisabeautifulstorm
Summary: Hisoka goes through the stages of forfeit and ultimately fails at it, as failure is the only logical conclusion to his plight. (Or, Illumi didn’t fail at love on his own; his loss heavily depended too on the choices of another or rather, the choices that person didn’t dare make).





	let him go

**Author's Note:**

> i did not plan this yet here we are.
> 
> This is a companion piece to _love him_ but it can be read as a standalone.
> 
> Song for this thing: The Last Time by Taylor Swift huehue.

 

> _You let him go from the start._

When he is tiny, innocent, unprepared for threats that are not blatant, that are not wrapped up in violence or introduced under the label of work, and he murders with barely a flick of his small fingers. When something inside quivers at the slide of his short bangs against his baby-fat strung cheeks, the unblinking quality of his apparently dead stare, the swing of immaculate fabric and the unintentionally colorful glimpse of naked calves as he moves near. Let go at once, when he looks at you with simultaneously open and closed eyes, and as you wipe your unsmooth fingers filthy with blood and other things on the back of ripped harem pants, they shine and lock on you instead of going away, like they have been revived by your rugged, broken silhouette and they are seeing something worthy of admiration, instead of the trash that is. When your own find him time and time again that afternoon, when you fail to provoke him into fighting, when you realize you may not want to—at least, not in the way that ends with his heart cradled in your palms and his empty ribcage screaming from a lifeless body—, when you seamlessly give him your name, let him go. _This I cannot have_ , you think, you don’t pursue, you walk away—you let go.

 

> _Let him go, even as you ruin it, ruin yourself as many times as it takes for you to realize the danger of it all._

It is true that, at first, you are the one who can’t stay away for too long. And it is also true that he is lonely, this small boy you were never supposed to meet, he is alone and has been isolated by his parents’ design and by the ruthless nature of his upbringing, and when you drop by unannounced, when you smile at him in mockery, when you interrupt his assassinations, when you are the one in the wrong, he looks at you as if you are the most painful thing to have ever cut him and, for the duration of an unlimited second, he is another fallen star longing for the sky, before he explodes in unseen rage and threatens to kill you. You were abandoned from birth. No one has ever looked at you as if you are a well guarded secret or a deeply repressed desire and thus, you let it be. You let him look, let him cling, let him dance around the borders of your realm. You should have known that, eventually, he would begin to reach too, for you, for your searching hand. The fun is lost amidst the intensity he grants you with just a look, a glance, a glare, and although he will not voice it, his pride will never allow him to, there is much to be inferred about the truth of his regard for the boy that came into his life like a car wreck— inevitably, unexpectedly, and unnecessarily too. The danger: he does not lift a finger to harm you and you remain alive, although he has had every chance in the world to change that. But he does not understand it, this, like you do, and before you know it he is in your life as well, he storms right in, and like a storm, he heralds the beginnings of havoc, of catastrophe, of the end. The end of everything that you are, encompassed in one person who is not and will not be the strongest or the deadliest. The peril of losing has never been more real. So you stop, you don’t look back, you don’t linger, you act the opposite of what he is starting to feel. He reaches and your hand moves farther away, out of reach. His fingers twitch, grasping at nothing, stung from a silent rejection.

 

> _Let him go, as you hope it will not grow._

This beating, this wild thing that thrums and pounds on the walls of your being. Let it go, you beg to your tender heartbeat, to the aching pangs of solitude that resound across tissue, to the pitiful corners of soul that croons when he is near and to the bruised part of yourself that cowardly admits _he’s the one._ It doesn’t matter that you find him interesting when he should be boring, the dullest being you have met so far, because he is quiet, does not say or share much, keeps his voice close to his chest the way he keeps family and their values close. He is strict with others and stricter with himself, he is a perfectionist, greatly dislikes disorder, spontaneity and mayhem. He is the embodiment of everything that you are not, everything you cannot be, and yet, you know that although he might act subdued, it is not because he is witless or because he lacks substance, or because he is hiding anything else that is not the turmoil of beasts that scratch at his skin and sometimes break through the surface to show the bite of bloody fangs he can’t always contain. He is empty in the heartbreaking manner that you are, stuffed to the brim with the remains of what had once been whole, and those reminders of forgotten normalcy have only festered, becoming the purulent creatures you know too well habituate best when you are clinging on to life by the slip of a thin thread. For him, you imagine, it is when he has successfully performed in the art of bloodshed and dutifully satisfied his family that the beasts cease roaring.

It is because against all odds you seem to be the only one to set your sights on him and see all of these fixtures play out so clearly— like an antique movie you remember, as you remember the scars draped on your back, where every past mistake and sin you have partaken in has been recorded—, that you have to let go.

He touches you with those deceptively slender hands that have hypnotized you as they dismembered, desecrated, decapitated; he smells like all the horrible, decayed things you have learned to love since early childhood, like mountain breeze and chrysanthemums and the sickeningly attractive odor of freshly spilled blood; he is beautiful like a pouring wound that never heals, his hair is the holy halo of an onyx night you wished for, for protection and for safety, when you were little, his eyes are mementos of death and, at the same time, they are yours alone for only you can decipher the hindered passions within, his appearance entire and undiluted is the reflection of the loveliness locked inside; he speaks to you like he is the only man alive that can speak your language, and his beauty, his endless depths, his indomitable grace and his killing instinct—they do not matter, it doesn’t matter that he shines so bright you’ve been blinded, because you do your best  to not let him see as much of you as you have seen of him, and you are letting him go then, by dismissing the fragility nurtured between the irreconcilable distance separating his truth from yours. 

 

> _Let him go, and you refuse to take a hold of what is willfully given._

No matter how hard you try, you can’t envision him as just another toy. You should have never come undone in his hands, bathed in spent daylight so his hollow eyes could better consume the smoke of your failures, drank from his comfort like a dying man, accepted it like it was rightfully yours and you were entitled to the fire of his arms around your waist and the secret warm whispers that promised safe haven and the sparks of hair against your face and the heat of skin that couldn’t and cannot go beyond the innocence of a gesture made in the name of a friendship that not even he will concede to. And when it feels like he is offering you the world in those moments, when it feels like he is gifting you the brittle opportunity to take and take, take as much as you want until there is nothing left to satiate your thirst, until you have vacated him completely from the inside out and you even his bones have yielded under your teeth, when all you have to do for perfection to ignite is to turn your head a centimeter to the left so your noses can brush in a rush and his eyes can find yours and you can pull his mouth inside yours, against yours, over yours, force to heat to skin to lips— when you know that you could easily allow yourself to have him and that it would be the easiest thing you have ever done, easier than breathing or living, you let go, that way, suddenly, shockingly, spouting excuses and shifting your gaze to dissimulate the deep ache you feel bursting, pulling away before you burn entirely, with the painful confusion of a child setting his first balloon free.

 

> _Let him go, because love is a wall that neither he nor you are ready to breach._

If you were meant to be, if it was fated, if the two of you belonged together like water and earth or music and string, like lovers in movies and princes and princesses in storybooks, then he would have confessed that hopeful truth crammed in between his molasses already. With his mouth and tongue he would have spoken, instead of doing it with his eyes, forever chasing, asking when no answer will be granted, and the fearful, no less scalding touches he sneaks in whenever he thinks you will not care to wonder about the hesitance written on the movements of his eager fingers as they caress bare shoulders, elbows and wrists. But because he hasn’t, because he doesn’t dare to give voice to that tremulous craving that has always denied censure, in spite of how he looks at you as if one word from your lips is enough to inflict what no nen or weapon has accomplished before, you understand that somewhere inside, somewhere deep down where his bleeding affection flutters scared from the light, he knows better than anyone else that the union he so desperately desires can never come to fruition. So, as he muffles his yearnings the way you silence your humanity, you let him go.

 

> _Let him go, before he can undo everything you accepted as irrefutable._

He becomes important, somehow. Without you noticing, he slips under the tears, scars, and burns marked upon your guard, he creeps where your disguised holes lie open, soft and shy beneath the thousands of layers of Texture Surprise you cover yourself with. He is still not the strongest person you know, not even the deadliest among the lot. But a wisp of joy touched lips, the slightest hint of swaying feelings sparkling to life under an indifferent semblance, the flaming red the curve of his ears turn into when he is embarrassed or when you have done something inappropriate, the vulnerable passion he exudes when talking of his beloved Killua, a gleam of the sensuous elongation of his swan-like neck, the sharp juts of his collarbones that push at the shirts and vests he wears, the deliciously unique negative tone of his relentless aura, the unconscious tremors of his fingers as he thinks and plans, the shamelessness he displays when he buys and eats gum in front of you without a care (the same brand you have bought since you were named a street urchin), his mint laced breath, his innocent dislike of wearing socks, the stagnant airs that cloud his speech, the breathless, patient way he cares for you that is so unlike the suffocating protection he willfully offers to family members, the hopeless yearning of a lone fallen star he unknowingly molds to the brush of his knuckles against the swells of your inflamed flesh—those small windows of individuality that he permits you to witness are sufficient to quell your hungers, each and every one, even the most rapacious of them all, and you do not understand, this completeness you gain from absolutely nothing, because life has always taught you otherwise. To want for frenzy, need only the company of temporary manic confrontations, the taste of blood ever filmed upon your smile, the familiar throb of shattered fists, and live for nothing but the pangs of violence you can obtain from the best. Anything else is accessory, unsatisfactory, not a necessity.

Or that is how it should be, what it should have been, because when he is with you, beside you, and you are quiet, drowning in the bittersweet perfume of the unsaid, the hazy horizon extending itself into an eternity none of you can fully assimilate (for a great part of being human relies on being unable to grasp the ethereal), two pair of hands caked in dried blood, doubting whether they ought to hold on to the other or not, feet anxiously shifting as they wait for a dancing invitation, sleeveless arms stuck in the masochistic limbo of being near enough to make contact with unknown skin and far enough to never indulge, pins tapping harmlessly at a vein on your bicep, the shadows in his eyes closely whispering what his mouth never has, and meanwhile, you gulp down your strangely jumpy heart, order it to stay distant from your limbs so they will not betray you, as it dawns on you like a bucket of freezing water dropped on top of your head in the early morning that you would not mind it at all if he were to take your life right then, unceremoniously, quickly, anticlimactically even, with just his talons digging through your corded back and ribs to fondle at your most necessary of organs palpitating just for him. When all of that transpires, and the moment seems to linger as the sun reaches the summit above your unmoving silhouettes, that is the exact glaring moment in which you flourish for real, truly content to not perform any longer, for your sake or anyone else’s, content to exchange delicate threats of murder, brush that faint line of unholy tension, to be as still as a corpse and burn next to him. At peace, for once.

Look at him, at the gentleness that escapes him then, in the light, in the minimal distance that stops you from unleashing your endless burden, and let him go. Remember the upcoming fights, the challenges, the new possibilities that are born every day, the people you have met and the talented some you have yet to meet, that he is but one powerful fighter, there is more to be found far from him, far from the stillness, the inaction, the unwanted weakness there exposed. Surrender the certainty that, if it is by his hand, if it is in his name, if it is with his lips heating against yours, if it is with the intent of an impossible love shining bright in the colorless orbs that were robbed of purpose too soon, you would settle, you would remain, you would conform to the peaceful tranquility of his presence and to an even more tranquil death granted by him, your miserable lapse of judgment. Surrender this momentary portrait of sunsets and of a future that will not be, shatter it with a joke, with poisonous lies, break the frame too, and let him go, will him to find his happiness anywhere else, somewhere solid that ought to endure for eternity and more, because you only know the faint flattery of frailty, fickleness and every dazzling image that lives for short, explosive seconds and is not intended to emulate the perdurability of words set on stone.

 

> _Let him go, so that the hungry monster you have created will not destroy him._

He loves you, loves you, loves you. Loves you madly enough that he is willing to lay down his restraints, his self-imposed rules, his beliefs, even his hatred, only to own one second of your time. He would give up everything for something as meaningless as a peek at one of your real smiles. Loves you so much that you are incapable of comprehending why. You are not the sky where he is supposed to fall in, you are not the one who mends him when he needs it, that will sing gentle lullabies to him after he has been hurt and he can’t bear the thought of going on. Kind, considerate, understanding, comforting, loving—those are words that have never been used to describe you. In reality, you are the stone he continues to trip his feet with, you are the blindfold that deprives him of sight, you are the knife that will never stop sinking in between his ribs every time he breaths, you are the poison coursing through his bloodstream that will write the end of his story one day. You are not family. Moreover, you are not Killua. Not even close.

You hurt him the way children tell fearless white lies. You do it always, devotedly, as if your purpose for being born was to torment him from the start, from that very first day, by mutilating whatever pre-fabricated notion of feeling the both of you conceived that day, so long ago.

You let him go, soberly, as you boast of your numerous conquests, all the while hoping he loses sleep over the thought of you, panting into sheets, being someone else’s for a night. You wish that his eyes do not close at all because he can picture with far too much ease the invisible traces of unfaithful worship others have left on your skin. You hunt many, worthy and unworthy alike, and then you go to him, after, and tremble in glee when you realize that the tension in his jaw is because he can’t decide whether to rip you apart or obliterate the one who experienced the fleeting joy of putting bruises on your skin, the very same bruises you know that he has longed to give you lovingly with his ravenous mouth and his equally starved hands since he was twelve and couldn’t look at you without blushing. You show him marks of possession drafted on your neck and hips, and single-mindedly adore the instinctive creature he becomes, how dangerously close he is to sinking his canines where your veins beat hotly and your flesh has been claimed. You provoke him, prioritize others, over and over, pursue Kastro, Chrollo and Gon and whoever catches your eye, aware of how your selfishness eats at him, and, consequently, you watch him as he loses the fight with his own self. He abandons his will, whenever you do this, and he begins to look decayed, eyes sunk, lips torn, nail wounds coating the pallor of long forearms, hair disheveled and sprinkled with grey, and it is horrendously cruel, that you know he wastes away like worn out clothes because he tortures himself day and night with the false conviction that he is nowhere near enough for you. It is crueler still that you cry and laugh at having successfully manipulated him once again. You let him go and let him down, in the worst manner conceivable, without a glimmer of humanity.

This is your way of telling him: you are awful, you are not good, you are not something to be wanted or desired; so many have had you that you don’t think that there is a segment of your body that is your own exclusively; you are an unredeemable bastard that enjoys setting the tender emotion he hasn’t even been able to share with you alight so that you can have the satisfaction of knowing there is someone idiotic enough to want to get on his knees and crawl for you; you utilize him, exploit him often because you know the lovesick fool will heed your call no matter what. _Walk away_ , you say in action alone. _Leave. Let go, just like I have._ And yet, when you finally think you have lost him, when you think he will give up at last, when you assume that the last thread of sentiment has snapped forever, he bounces back to your side, built from scratch, his health regained, unbearably beautiful and somehow whole, ready and prepared enough to love still the iron fist that chokes his heart, love it more than he could ever love himself, love it with the intensity required to overcome the bitter, putrid taste of your betrayal, your constant rejections, your intentionally harmful choices, and each time this toxic cycle repeats, each time you tear him open only for him to suture his injuries and start afresh, each time you fail to drive him away, you let go, let go, let go, let go of the vulnerable child that naively bleeds for another that has been shedding his own for far too long, let go of the enormous eyes that melt and feel for you, let go of that reaching hand, let go as many times as it takes until it sticks that whatever this is that exists between assassin and magician has been crumbling at the seams from day one.

 

> _Let him go, when you fail to return to him._

Your life ends insignificantly, matching the inconsequential character of random murders perpetrated under the cloak of night. There is no fanfare, no fireworks, and no blazing fires to announce your final sentence in society. It is over in scorching speed, and you only have a lapse of time to substitute the itch of Shalnark’s needles for the malicious coatings of his pins, his nen, to formulate the hushed turning of his serene visage towards you—sunlight dripping from the tip of his nose, the roots of his hair the bow of his lips, a mantle of darkness billowing placidly around his body—, before the shade of the abyss explodes into existence and manages to overwhelm you, finally. This was not how you wanted to die. This is not how you imagined being let go of. Anger, disappointment, fear, resignation, hopelessness—amidst it all burns an ember of relief; perhaps now you will be free to let him go, and he will learn to fill the void of his absent love with the flavor of bittersweet release.

 

> _Let him go, once more, be crueler this time, the cruelest you can ever hope to be, to entirely extinguish the seed of hope that has kept his heart alive for this long._

You inhale deeply, enjoying that the air your lungs are taking in will be the last to be absorbed this easily, without the pain, regret or guilt that are about to come pummeling your chest, converting the harmless task into a daunting labor of gasping your miseries back inside and morphing your laughs into sobs. You cling to the coins of bravery incrusted deep within your pockets, you practice the succession of stinging words inside your head, they echo without a finish line in mind, go on and on to remind you of what you are mere seconds away from losing. Except, you do not think losing is the correct tense, though. What you have lost already, is more likely, what you dropped to the ground carelessly when you were young and stupid and blind with a lying ego that hissed that you were above everything you could want the way the ‘normals’ wanted. You soldier on, and step inside the shop.  He is sitting at the farthest corner, sharp and hollowed cheek buried in a palm as he gazes into the fathoms of a drink he cannot taste of be affected by; he is still heartbreakingly precious, with the bruised purple coloring beneath his vacant eyes, the smooth hair that, even unwashed and uncared for, falls undisturbed like a stream, the prickly bones that protrude from his fanned and washed out dermis, and it hits you, suddenly, that you could draw with a pen the smudged base lines of the thirteen year old boy that charmed a seventeen year old you; you can see him, plainly, the boy that lives on today, concealed by the man he has become. You loved him, you realize. You have always loved him, and you have selfishly turned that love into a tragedy. You chose to love the idea of your flawed reputation first; you loved his pining better than you loved the reality where he and you could have been the most beautiful disaster to have ever disgraced the human race.

As if he can hear the incessant screaming within you, and he is profoundly entwined with the moves that you make, with all of your stammering throbs of vivacity protected behind your ribcage, he lifts his gaze that stabs you to stand in place, the world captured in his eyes, as his heart, his everything, his undesired meaning reflected on that charcoal stare is captured: you, haggard, disguised in dullness, trying your hardest not to hold on. It corrodes your leftover muscles and facial skin that, after everything has been done, he remains in total capacity of looking at you like that. Like you are whole and not the disjointed pieces Chrollo has made of you. They visit you again like mournful ghosts, the reasons why you refused to yield. Letting him in would mean a surrender you have not lived, felt, understood or desired, a surrender that wasn’t planned, that implied _this is enough_ when you were nowhere near glory yet; you do not have what it takes to open up to another person, not in the way a functional relationship requires; you are whimsical, broken and fickle and the last thing you would want is to give him everything he has wished for served on a platter, solely for him to find out too late that it was all a sham; he doesn’t realize it, probably will never believe it, the lessons imposed by his parents are laws firmly engraved into his thoughts, and although it’s true that you might be biased, it would not be a lie to say that he exceeds everyone, that he is far greater and far more relevant than any of the other miserable souls wasting their air on this planet; he is untouchable and magnificent and so high above the likes of you that this situation itself is ridiculous: he, the successful, talented, educated and promising offspring of one of the most powerful families in the whole world whose influence extends deep into the life source of the underground, tearing strips and choppy strings of sentiment from thawed limbs because a nobody from the slums with no concept of measure or modesty or caution couldn’t say no to the countless nibbles from  spinning wheels offered on the road to self-destruction. And in the end that’s what it comes down to. You are the one who is not enough for him. His parents would have never accepted you. Their judging eyes would have detected the mistakes written on every inch of naked flesh. He would have tired of you eventually. There is only so much to go on about exciting, bright, and dazzling jewels before they start to lose the mystery of allure and the illusion of grandeur falls short. He would see you as you are and what you are, of that you are certain, he would not love any more than you do. Who could lay eyes upon the pathetic, whimpering creature begging for scraps of attention that rests at your core and possibly be indulgent enough to love it? He would detest such a sight and he would run the other way, wouldn’t he? More than anything, you think, it would destroy you if he were to be the one to walk away. To leave you behind in the dust, forgotten.

Your throat closes in when you say _Have you missed me?_ so callously, like the mocking tone won’t crash on landing. His knuckles harden; you kind of wish he would just crush the cup in his hands already. Crush you where you stand already. _Was it worth it?_ He retorts instead, somber and dull as if all of his lights have gone out. _No._ It’s been so far one of the hardest things you have ever done, accepting that ultimately the entire effort was not needed, was something that you could have lived perfectly without. Lived, hah. _Are you satisfied?_ Cute, that he’d ask that in particular. _I never am._ He doesn’t smile, but then again, he rarely does. As usual you are talking in the only form the two of you know, going and going in circles until both your heads are spinning.

_How could I be, after what happened?_

_You have no one to blame but yourself._

_Right?_

_Hisoka, you—_

_It finally hit me._

_What did?_

_What I’ve intrinsically known all this time. I’m not what I thought I was._

_…._

_I am not strong._

_That is not true._

_Oh, so I’m lying? Then what did it all mean? What did my death mean, Illumi?_

_…Even if it were true, it does not have to change anything._

_Oh, but it does. It does. You see, I am not me, Illumi. And I’m fed up with running from the inevitable._

_Why did you invite me here?_

If only he knew. You pause, an ironical threat of a sneer on your mouth. Your fingertips drum a sad melody on the table. He is looking at you still. Throughout the years, not once has he ever looked away—not when you were children and definitely not now. This one time though, he just might. Before you can regret it, before you can come up with new alternatives, before you are throttled by the finality of this moment, you say _Because I need you._ A bullet of piercing agony bores right through you, right where your pulse accelerates at the beautiful sparkle of hope that blooms on his face. He doesn’t prompt you to follow through with your explanation, relaxes his shoulders even though he shouldn’t, anxiously waits for you, but this was not the reaction you hoped, not this vulnerable anticipation that reeks of summertime, bubblegum and the flutter of his hair pressed to the itches on your nose, the sweaty embrace of your palms and the breathless robbery of a kiss on red cheeks. Take a deep breath. Count to ten. Forget him. Forget yourself. Let him go. And you pull the rug from underneath your feet, allowing the void below to swallow you whole. _You see, I want revenge,_ he darkens instantly, facial muscles stark against the overall serenity, your eyes grow warm and humid, your hands start to tremble and the first signs of increasing panic start to appear on his visage, as if foresight has hit him too with the might of a plummeting boulder. He shakes his head then, painfully bearing the first rejection he has mustered enough willpower to commit for the first time in years, and isn’t it a thousand shades of fucked up that you feel pride kindling in your marrow for that? Another teeth-shattering wrench in your façade of nonchalance; he has finally found it in him to deny you, and you can’t even grant him that, you will not let him have this instant of reprieve. He has to hear what you have to say, although he seems to be on the verge of regressing to the age of child, of covering his ears with his fists to block out the words that will end this for good. The skin beneath his sockets, where purple bruises from lack of sleep should be located, are turning a sickly looking red, his nails are leaving unintentional indentations on the surface of the table, veins pop out on his forearms and neck, nostrils are quivering, and there he is, your boy, that beautiful boy with no smiles to spare. You let him go. You silently promise this will be the last time you cause him pain. You say, over the intangible howls of despair, _and I want you to kill me_ , and you can pinpoint the exact second in which his love falls apart—falls along with you to the infinite depths of the void, screaming with your voice.

 

> _Let him go, and this last shot kills you both._

You once figured you had spared the boy’s life that day. By not killing him. But the truth of the matter is that you hadn’t really needed to physically extract his heart from his chest for him to keel over. As it turns out, from that moment onwards, you have had his beating heart at the mercy of your unmerciful hands. Beating and beating, knitted to the meat of your palms, the boy’s heart, forevermore.

You see this, in the glistening tracks that mark his cheeks. Feel it, in the warm grip he has you in, can almost taste it in the wobbly upper lip speckled with residues of your blood. In the hollow tint to his pallor, in how he seems to be not quite present, in the absent traverse of unsteady digits through your wet hair. In the careful way he cradles your head against the punishing pounding of his heart, the heart that dies along with you, that has been dying from the moment he unknowingly surrendered it to you. You crushed it with your denial, when you should have held it close to the vacancy in your own chest. _I’m sorry_ , is what you might have said in another universe, but your mouth is heavy as lifts and your jaw is throbbing madly and you are not sure that the apology would be honest anyway, that you wouldn’t resort to evasion all over again if the chance to return to the beginning was given. But let it be known that you do not regret him. You don’t regret loving this boy, even if you never showed him that you did. Even if it was only the rumor of childish fantasies in the back of your head that knew that you loved him. You can’t regret the petty fights, the inane arguments, the same old bickering, the jealousy, the anger, the resignation, the depression, the senseless excitement, the complete myriad of acute feelings he awakened when nothing else could. He was every phase of happiness and every phase of misery and you cherish everything he has bequeathed you as much as you are able to cherish anything. Mostly, you are glad that it is him who takes away what mattered most to the two of you, that it is by his hand that you let go, that it is because of his blood-drenched talons that you are leaving at last. He saw at your best and at your worst and now, he gets to see you go.

He whispers your name to your numb hairline, his breath warm when the rest of him is glacial, and if there is one thing you do regret is not having kissed him sooner. His lips now are dry, cracked and bleeding, but you think you wouldn’t mind learning too late what the yearning of a star tastes like. Maybe it would have fitted perfectly with the taste of your own starving demons. A trembling hand rises, and he grasps it tightly, his own uncontrollably unstable, presses it to the mouth you’ve been admiring, adoring your hand like he would have adored you devotedly, completely, once upon a time. He is the center of all things and right now your world ends and starts with this wide-eyed boy, lost in the tumble of rain and blood. You are crying, you realize abruptly, tear-ducts spilling out of inertia. Caressing his chilled cheek, focusing your gaze as intensely as you can in these circumstances, straining whatever is left of your vocal chords, you try to convey: _Thank you. For everything. It’s over, Illumi. You are free._

Salty water finds its way in between your lips, and it’s not from the rain. It’s not from your tears.

Slowly, your fingers let go, leaving crimson streaks on his skin.

His stare shuts down, emptying all notions of feeling as he loses what kept it an inch above death.

You realize you can’t either feel the biting cold of rain or the heat from his body.

 

> _You smile_

~~this is the last time ,~~

 

> _and let him go._
> 
>  
> 
> _**Let him go so he, too, can let go.** _

**Author's Note:**

> Leave them comments down below :) I swear I don't bite. Much. 
> 
> You can also come yell at me about Hisoillu on my tumblr: loki-of-war.


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